


Rubix's Dilemma

by OwlFlight



Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Sandman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, F/M, Gen, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Old Fic Newly Archived Here, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 14:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwlFlight/pseuds/OwlFlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John (who is not truly John, and has always been John) takes no pleasure in what was once his function – and still is, to a certain extent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rubix's Dilemma

John has not been a soldier for many thousands of lifetimes, in whatever manner one might measure time. Still, form implies function – or rather, the reverse in his case. Soldiers, after all, exist for one purpose and one alone.

Times change, and the modern warrior (and what a word, modern! How delightful, how demanding of change, of progress) no longer carries a sword. They carry guns and grenades, weapons that can wreck many times more carnage then a simple blade.

The principle is there, however.

His sword is tucked safely away in his quarters. Not that it matters. It seldom gets used anymore – at least by him.

On coming to Atlantis, they were told to bring only a single personal item. He didn’t declare the sword as his.

After all, it is a part of him, like a hand or foot. What need would a person have to declare a part of themselves as such?

***

He wonders, sometimes, why he decided to come.

The answer, on one level, is simple. He flipped a coin (and the coin spins still in his memory, reminding him of another coin, so long ago) and it came up heads. On another level, it is much more complex.

Although he quit, although his realm is sealed and bound, although the sword lies still in his chambers – he is still that which he ever was. He will not drop that burden and force another to carry on in his place.

So in his wanderings, when he decided, for a times, to take a mortal guise, it was only natural that he should be drawn to that which he knows best.

And now he walks the floors of a crystal city, home of the Ancients (and how delightfully ironic, he thinks, that such a young race should have such an old name) and watches the people under his command. Watches those that he considers, albeit reluctantly, his friends (for look at what happened to the last batch of those whom he called friends. Ishtar, fled once more into the Realm of his brother. The Alder Man, walking the world without a shadow to his name. And others, many others – all gathered gently into the hands of his eldest sister).

***

He is asked, sometimes, of his family. Is he missed? Do they send him letters? What do his parents think of such a venture? Does he have any brothers or sisters?

He simply smiles. Others draw their own conclusions.

He left his family a long time ago. The choice was his (and for the first time, it was truly a choice, not a task to be completed) and he chose to leave. He walked creation for a time, and found himself free.

After a while, he grew bored. And the coin came up heads.

He muses, sometimes, on what his family would make of his friends.

***

He walks, and watches, and thinks.

***

He walks past the gym, and Teyla is there, working her way through a kata, grace and power emphasized in every curve of her body. Teyla – elegant, aloof Teyla, who kicks his ass in stick fighting (never mind that he knew the shape and dance of the battle sticks long before her thrice-great grandfather came into being) and who watches all with concealed laughter in her eyes. Somehow, that spark of amused patience reminds him of his elder sister – jovial and human in a way impossible to describe. How she was all the mother the rest of them had ever known.

The resemblance isn’t total. Still, he likes to think that the two of them – his teammate and his sister – would make good friends. There is a certain similarity of character that he thinks would bind them together.

They’ll meet, someday. In the end, everyone meets his sister.

***

He wanders past the medlab, and sees Carson hunched over his microscope, white coat bunched into dingy folds that indicate he’s pulled another all-nighter. Poor Carson. He has seen other doctors fall before into the hands of his sister (the plague years flash before his eyes, of a chance meeting on a deserted road when his sister was worshipped as the idea she can never move beyond) – bound by their grief at all those they could not save, all those they feel they could have rescued from the long journey that every human must someday face.

Carson feels it doubly hard. He has participated in experiments and events that no doctor should have to face. He has had his research and his medical knowledge twisted into weapons that have killed hundreds, if not thousands – and he still participated, knowing the end to which his work would be used.

The doctor’s broken oath bites as keenly as does the hook of his sister, entangled deep within muscle and flesh.

Poor Carson. He spares a sympathetic look for the doctor and moves onward, knowing that any comfort offered would meet a swift rejection.

***

He passes by Elizabeth’s office. She’s in there, arguing with Caldwell about some matter or another. He doesn’t really care.

Elizabeth – poor, potent Elizabeth, who truly wants this expedition to be a success. With every group of solders that enter the gateroom, a little more of her is reminded how this operation was originally intended to be a civilian matter, meant to explore and discover and benefit humanity as a whole – and a little more of her dies inside. She has faced down horrors and decisions that no one person should ever have to make (and yet every leader he has ever encountered must fall to fly) and has to live with the future she has chosen.

She wants them to succeed – she would walk through fire to see her people safe and her desire of a risen city realized. All unknowing, she wears her heart on her sleeve – and in it, he can see a silvery reflection of his brother-sister’s symbol.

Caldwell, on the other hand, is a man of rules and regulations. He walks the straight and narrow, for he simply cannot perceive the other paths that he could choose, were he willing. He fights for Atlantis because it is his duty, rather then his dream – a duty laid upon him by superiors he does not think to question, only obeys.

For all of that, they’re growing on him. Wearing down his defenses, taking him in. Making the Captain of the Daedalus one of their own. He would lay down his life in their defense, and he will, one day. That is the fate of every soldier. That is the destiny John’s eldest brother has appointed for him – one Caldwell knows, and has never struggled against.

He wonders if Caldwell has ever dared dream of release from his chains.

***

Ronan passes him on his morning run. They share a nod before the warrior pulls ahead, concentrating solely on his exercise.

It seems odd that a former Runner should spend so much of his time engaged in an activity he should hate. Perhaps he simply wishes to keep in shape. Perhaps he clings to the familiarity of the routine, something he can count on in a world that is growing steadily more complex and unreliable.

Perhaps he has run so long that he can no longer recall how to stop.

John wonders, sometimes, of the company Ronan kept during his years fleeing from the Wraith. It is not impossible that the man encountered his youngest sister. (In fact, it is most likely a certainty) He might have dipped into her realm at one time or another. And Delight twisted – is that not a fitting haven for one who has seen his whole world fall?

Ronan never talks about it, if it ever did occur. But his eyes – they are the eyes of a man who has dragged himself through hell and back. They speak of madness tamed and bloody flames. Yes, Ronan has indeed walked with his sister.

***

It is in the middle of wondering how Barnabas is faring that he encounters Doctor Zelenka. Radek is hunched behind a data pad, ambling through the hallways without sparing a glance for the people in front of him. He nearly runs into the transporter door before John gently steers him clear of the obstacle.

John gazes after him thoughtfully, waving aside the preoccupied mutter of thanks. For all that the man has been with them since the beginning, he still knows relatively little about the Czech.

The man is smart – that much is obvious. And brave enough to chance a one-way trip to another galaxy. Brave enough to put up with Rodney in full-on rant mode, and loyal enough not to choke him in his sleep – not to mention completely addicted to coffee.

Yet those qualities are not in short supply on Atlantis. Actually, his description makes Zelenka out to be something of an average citizen.

There is the matter of his rather obvious crush on Elizabeth, but it is simply that, a crush at best and a minor heartbreak at worst. No, that is not his dream.

John wonders what it is that made Zelenka decide to come on the expedition. What did he dream of accomplishing here? What made him come back?

There is no such thing as an average individual. John knows that. And he wonders what his brother (well, the newer model of his brother), who has a taste for puzzles and mysteries, would make of Radek Zelenka.

If nothing else, the man deserves a dream of his own.

***

And then there is Rodney.

Rodney, who is a little bit of everything. Rodney, who dreams of so many different things, ideas skittering through his mind like raindrops on a windshield, dreams too great and grand for mortal flesh to affix to the waking world. And yet he tries, struggling with the skating inspiration, daring the Hydra for a fistful of ideas he can fashion into another miracle.

Rodney, who is the most passionate, infuriating man he has ever met. Who tells the world what he wants – loudly, in his blunt, plain, absolutely maddening manner, usually through a mouth half crammed with the omnipresent powerbar. The scientist truly doesn’t seem to understand the word “tact” – if he wants something, he focuses on the goal with a single-minded intensity awe-inspiring to behold.

Rodney is everything and nothing. He can go from an ecstasy close to the pinnacle of near delirium (complete with a crooked smile that beams brighter then any prismatic sunray) to the deepest depths of pale despair in less then a heartbeat. All or nothing – no middle ground whatsoever.

The man is absolute arrogance – born out of a well-earned confidence in his own abilities. Yet even that is shaken at times – Rodney was never meant for war, but he had been forced to watch too many of his own people die. John knows that that must grate upon him – but Rodney is a survivor, and it is only in the darkest hours of the night that he shows any strain. John is strangely touched that he is the only one who has ever seen that side of the chief scientist – that he is the only one who has ever held Rodney as he cried and wept and screamed out that is should have been him, it should have been him who died and the others who lived.

Rodney was never meant to be a soldier. He’s started walking the path of one all the same. What worries John the most is that he seems to have accepted it – as if the same destiny that brought him to Atlantis, the only place the man could ever call home, has laid this path before him. He seems to see it as his appointed future. John may believe in destiny, but he also believes in free will – a lesson he’s been trying to teach people for a long, long time.

***

So yes. Rodney is a conundrum, a puzzle, a man whom each of John’s family might stake claim to. In the old days, they might declare a contest over him, to try and see into whose realm the man would ultimately wander. In fact, they still might.

It wouldn’t do them any good.

John (who is not truly John, and has always been John) takes no pleasure in what was once his function – and still is, to a certain extent. But rules are rules, and he felt a sharp rush of satisfaction the day Rodney became his . He is, and has been so ever since he destroyed five-sixths of a solar system in a feat so grand that he marked himself permanently as John’s.

Rodney can see his sword where it hangs in his chambers, even if he calls it a “rusty piece of junk”. He can see the battle-haze of history that drapes the towers, even if he dismisses it as a mirage. He bears John’s mark now, etched indelibly into soul and spirit.

He doesn’t realize that the sword is now his as much as John’s. That despite his whispered declarations in the bedroom, when they both are spent and shaking, he belongs to John in a manner that goes beyond words.

John’s thought of telling him a time or two. It doesn’t really matter.

After all, he belongs to Rodney as well.

**Author's Note:**

> So - first post on AO3. 
> 
> I've archived this at various other sites online, and have chosen to finally upload it here. Yes, I am the original author. No, I do not own any of the characters/settings etc here. Yes, I own the story idea - ask me first, please, if you want to play around with it.


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